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Corporate mining giant Vedanta has been violating the human rights of tribals in Odisha for many years now. The Dongria Kondhs, a primitive tribe, has been forced to relinquish their rights over their homeland, and cultural and livelihood resources to accommodate the company’s refinery and mines complex. The company’s mines, no matter how benign, will rip through a hill that is the sacred deity of the tribe that has lived in these hills for centuries without leaving a trace on the sensitive ecosystem of the biodiverse watershed forests. The hills that are slotted for mining are home to the Golden Gecko, a species that figures in IUCN’s Red List of endangered species. The Niyamgiri Mountains are the primary source of drinking water for the entire area, apart from being the source of two important rivers of Orissa Nagabali and Vamsadhara which are the lifeline of at least 50000 people downstream.

Research by Amnesty International and other local and international groups documents the serious and continuing pollution caused by the refinery’s operations. Despite the string of decisions against Vedanta, the company has failed to remedy the pollution.

In March this year shortly after Vedanta launched its public relations campaign, called ‘ creating happiness “. – a series of short films about Vedanta that aired on 37 TV channels – was an advertising campaign conceived by India’s ad guru Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy & Mather. It was launched with a technically slick film that focused on the apparent happiness of Binno, a small girl in Rajasthan, when she discovers that she can get an education from the anganwadis (child day care centres) set up by the company.

We launched our FAKING HAPPINESS CAMPAIGN with series of open letters and call for short film competition, showing the true picture of Vedanta. Following our onslaught, Shyam Benegal and Gul Panag withdrew from the jury saying they were unaware of Vedanta’s role in the competition. At the end of the day, Vedanta’s PR campaign backfired badly.

Now once again Vedanta ,as they claim have launched first social media campaign ‘ Vedanta ‘ Khushi” , and we are back with a BANG.

Here is the launch of our, ‘ VEDANTA ki VEDANA” Campaign. We launch our first Music Video- ‘Vedanta Saddan”

Lyrics are by- Rahul Yogi Deveshwar

Singer- Madan Shukla

Edited and Adapted by- Kamayani Bali Mahabal

A big THANKS to Music Inn support for the recording

The Facebook page says-KHUSHI” is a mission started on fulfilling the objective and let know the world that we do “Care for the Under-Privileged Children” – their Nutrition – Education – Health and overall development. “KHUSHI” – a Vedanta Group initiative – is a mission to bring in together like minded people, particularly youth of today, to spread this awareness amongst colleagues, friends, relatives and people around, through word of mouth or through e-medium and the way one feels would be useful.

And we know what an apt time to start the campaign when Vedanta is fighting for its existence

The Supreme Court is due to make a final decision on the challenge posed to the Environment Ministry’s stop to the Niyamgiri mine on 11th January, 2013 . In its December 6th hearing the Supreme Court concluded that the case rested on whether the rights of the indigenous Dongia Kond’s – who live exclusively on that mountain – could be considered ‘inalienable or compensatory’. The previous ruling by Environment and Forests minister Jairam Ramesh in August 2010 prevented Vedanta from mining the mountain due to violations of environment and forestry acts. The challenge to this ruling has been mounted by the Orissa Mining Corporation, a state owned company with 24% shares in the joint venture to mine Niyamgiri with Vedanta, begging questions about why a state company is lobbying so hard for a British mining company in whom it has only minority shares in this small project. (see http://infochangeindia.org/environment/features/niyamgiri-a-temporary-reprieve.html)

While The Hindu continues to target the youth, in its latest television commercial it turns the spotlight on Indian politicians and focuses on the poor example of governance that is being set by them for the new generation.

Beat up your children and they will think it’s the norm. Fight before the young and they will learn to do it better. Break chairs in the midst of solving national issues and the youth will trust that it’s precisely how the country is run. And so, behave.

This is the insight The Hindu’s latest ad is based on. After an entire campaign run which involved The Hindu and The Times of India taking shots at each other, the Chennai-based national daily has launched a fresh ad campaign that urges the nation’s leaders to conduct themselves well.

While the broadsheet continues to target the youth with the campaign, taking off from where it left in its previous communication, this time around it tries to ‘behave’ more inclusive.

In its latest television commercial, the daily turns the spotlight on Indian politicians and focuses on the poor example of governance that is being set by them for the new generation.

Even as it stirs up a conversation that is really affecting the youth, the campaign decides to talk through those who are the source of that very conversation.

Conceptualised by Ogilvy India, the film is set in a classroom. The TVC opens with the professor asking his students to debate the rural development bill; and yes, he seeks ‘proper parliamentary behaviour’. The house is set open wherein two groups of students are pitted against each other. Very soon, the situation turns chaotic. Furniture breaks, books fly, faces are punched. Eventually, as an instrumental version of poet Narsinh Mehta‘s ‘Vaishnava jana to’ (a bhajan endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi during his daily prayer) takes over the screaming disorder, the ad ends with the note, ‘Behave Yourself, India. The Youth Are Watching’.

The insight

While The Hindu wanted to continue its dialogue with the youth, it was also keen to build a mechanism that would allow the daily to extend a thought that could raise many more pertinent issues.

And that is when the idea made its way. Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy says that the idea occurred while he was disturbed by something he saw on television. What followed is The Hindu TVC that he wrote.

“The insight is very simple and comes from our everyday lives. It asks us to behave wisely because it will impact the way our children will conduct themselves. The ad tries to talk sensibly to the largest target group of this country (the youth) through an idea, which is much larger and therefore, the positioning becomes much wider now,” says Pandey.

Joono Simon, ECD (South) Ogilvy worked in close collaboration with Pandey to conceptualise and create the campaign.

‘Behave Yourself, India. The Youth Are Watching’ can easily change tone and talk about social injustice, intolerance, attitude toward senior citizens, or even address the current economic divide without taking much away from the classroom scene. But to begin with, The Hindu chose to speak about the politicians.

“A vibrant democracy requires participation of the youth predominantly and in today’s era, the lack of political icons is the bane of the country; the youth of today do not see strong icons to emulate in comparison to the heroes of yesteryears. The Hindu exposes this stark contrast of leadership, and is set to the pulse of the youth and their resentment with today’s governance,” says Suresh Srinivasan, vice-president, advertisement, The Hindu Group of Publications.

“Our previous campaign was not just a reaction to TOI; it was to propagate a story that was begging to be told. Showcasing the horror in junk news consumption and re-establishing that knowledge is the ‘new cool’. This campaign, like the previous one, is also set to the pulse of the youth and strengthens our positioning as a vibrant and aggressive brand,” he adds.

The film that is already being shared and talked about extensively on social networks is being supported by digital and cinema promotions. The print campaign too shall be launched shortly.

The insight-execution translation

For Jitender Dabas, executive vice-president and head of planning, McCann Worldwide, the ad is a ‘populist’ commercial. According to him, newspapers playing the voice of conscience of the society or holding the mirror to the society is one of the most obvious brand strategies in the newspaper/media category and bashing the politicians is the best way to take a populist moral high ground in our society today.

“So, I see this ad getting very popular in urban India very soon and generating a lot of conversations. It will perhaps also enhance the stature of brand ‘The Hindu’. But will it ever succeed in getting the young, whose cause the newspaper seems to espouse or who are watching this ad on social media, to pick up a copy of ‘The Hindu’? I am not so sure. What surely works for the ad is great monochrome execution and the choice of music,” he says.

According to Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, executive creative director, Leo Burnett, a newspaper stands for what is happening in the country at that moment. “And if the dynamics of the country is changing, it is only right to strategically portray what the current scenario is. We always say that we should be a living example for our children but our country’s so called political oldies with their tantrums are exactly the opposite. The insight has been very clearly communicated. Like the way the professor is shown — a middle aged man who does not have any point of view like many in our country and will still look in doubt as if nothing has happened.”

“Creating Happiness” – a series of short films about Vedanta that aired on 37 TV channels – was an advertising campaign conceived by India’s ad guru Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy & Mather. It was launched earlier this year with a technically slick film that focused on the apparent happiness of Binno, a small girl in Rajasthan, when she discovers that she can get an education from the anganwadis (child day care centres) set up by the company.

The company announced an initiative for students at media and film institutes to produce short films about the company that would then be judged in competition by a heavy-weight jury consisting of Pandey, actor Gul Panag and noted director Shyam Benegal who had championed “art cinema.” (Benegal’s early films realistically depicted feudal conditions in rural India).

Vedanta was already well known in India but for very different reasons. Several years ago, the company applied for a license to mine for bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha and to set up an accompanying refinery. The refinery was set up at Lenjigarh but the manner in which the company flagrantly flouted laws regarding land acquisition and displaced people and did not adhere to environmental norms aroused huge anger among the local population.

Vedanta appealed and the case now rests in the Supreme Court in Delhi.

In March this year shortly after Vedanta launched its public relations campaign, things went off the carefully planned script. A few caustic comments on social networking sites fuelled anger against Vedanta which then went viral.

Kamayani Bali Mahabal, a human rights activist from Mumbai, penned an open letter on the Web to film maker Shyam Benegal whom she hailed as “a voice for the voiceless.” The letter appealed to him to pull out of the jury of the competition because “Vedanta is not creating happiness but it is faking happiness.” Embedded in the online letter were several videos made by activist Surya Prakash Dash that captured the anger and anguish of the Kondh community.

Critics charged that Vedanta’s attempt at burnishing its reputation – spearheaded by Priya Agarwal, the 22 year old daughter of the company’s executive chairman Anil Agarwal – had been timed before the crucial final hearing in the Supreme Court on April 9, for Vedanta’s appeal to be allowed to mine bauxite. (A decision is expected this August)

An online petition was launched on Change.org to Ambika Soni, the information and broadcasting minister, was launched demanding that the film be pulled from TV, attracting dozens of angry comments and thousands of signatures.

“Vedanta Creating Happiness…this is as true as Iraq having Weapons of Mass Destruction,” wrote Sushil Yadav. “It’s like Hitler pretending to be Mother Teresa,” added Reboni Saha.

Ashok Thurai, another commenter, noted that parallels between Vedanta’s action in central India and the film Avatar which pits the (fictional) indigenous Na’vi against the RDA corporation mining for nobatium people on planet Pandora.

Activists also struck back with their own competition asking for creative content on the topic of “Faking Happiness.” Blog posts, short films, cartoons and spoofs poured in on Facebook and YouTube that charged Vedanta with falsehoods.

One film – by Nakul Sawhney – focused on disadvantaged young children like Binno whose parents’ rights to land, forests and pure water water had been snatched away. It was interspersed with interviews with actual villagers from the Niyamgiri hills like Kurmali Majhi of Simlibhatta who spoke of community lands being acquired by brute force.

Another film – by Manasi Pingle – remixed a Coca Cola jingle and visuals with public data to puncture the myth of “sunshinewali asha” (hope for sunshine). For example the film noted that for every Rs. 6 (12 US cents) that the government spends on health and family welfare, it gives away Rs 95 ($1.90) in tax relief for corporations.

At the end of the day, Vedanta’s PR campaign appears to have backfired badly. “(I)t would appear that Vedanta is less the leader in sustainable development and social responsibility in India’s universe of corporations, and more the black sheep of that world,” concluded novelist Chandrahas Choudhury in an editorial written for Bloomberg.

On a recent visit to Bhubaneswar, the capital of the large eastern state of Odisha, I found the airport plastered with advertisements and slogans expressing the nurturing, socially conscious side — caring for the poor, growth with inclusive values, creating happiness — of the many steel and aluminum companies that have major operations in one of India‘s poorest but most mineral-rich and business-friendly states.

The most prominent voice in this cluster belonged to Vedanta, a London Stock Exchange-listed “globally diversified natural resources group with wide-ranging interests in aluminium, copper, zinc, lead, silver, iron ore, oil and gas and power,” headed by Anil Agarwal, one of India’s richest and most controversial businessmen. Vedanta’s main interest in Odisha is represented by its subsidiary company Vedanta Aluminium, which has over the last decade set up, in the face of concerted opposition from tribal groups, an alumina refinery in the district of Lanjigarh, the most bauxite-rich area of a state that has over half of India’s reserves of that mineral. A Vedanta ad at the airport declared that “Education is the backbone of a rising community,” and announced, somewhat improbably, that the company was providing “quality education to all local children across [the districts of] Lanjigarh and Jharsuguda.”

This month, Vedanta also put up on YouTube the last installment of a massive advertising and public-relations campaign it launched at the beginning of the year called “Creating Happiness.” The hub of the campaign was a 90-second ad film widely played on Indian television this year, telling the story of a girl named Binno in a village in the state of Rajasthan. Made by one of India’s most celebrated ad filmmakers, Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy & Mather India, the film supplies touching scenes from the lives of Binno — who attends a school supported by Vedanta — and her brothers. It is accompanied by commentary from a somewhat patronizing male voice asking if the girl’s parents had access to the same opportunities, and demonstrating by this comparison that the company was “creating happiness.”

Alongside the Binno film, the company also announced that it was sponsoring a Creating Happiness Film Competition that would invite “film students across the country to visit any of the 550 villages where we have a presence, and find their own Binno.” In a piece called “Vedanta touches souls with ‘Creating Happiness’,” the news platform Exchange4media reported:

In an effort to make people aware of the social side of their existence, Vedanta Group […] has unveiled its first ever national corporate campaign under the platform of ‘Creating Happiness’, sharing with people the stories of hope, change, success and a better future. Vedanta Chairman Anil Agarwal’s vision of contributing to building sustainable communities and integrating sustainability as a core part of the business is at the heart of this campaign. [….]

Talking to exchange4media about the campaign, Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman, O&M, said, “Beyond business, Vedanta is doing extensive work for sustainable development. We wanted it to be as realistic as possible unlike an ad, and thus we have shown real people with real stories. Binno, the main face of the campaign, is so amazingly charming. Her true story, with that charm, emotion, sentiment and happiness, will inspire many.” […]

Adding to the idea of inspiring others, Pandey said, “You get inspired when you see that there is so much being done. It inspires and moves me. I feel that I may start small, but I can make a difference. Large brands are not made in the head, but heart, that is why when you take the softer side and touch people, people remember you.”

Fair enough, but there were some inconvenient facts that Pandey omitted to mention, as did most of the media channels that ran the advertisements. The missing facts point to a yawning gulf between the kind of information supplied by advertising, and the kind of information generated by investigative journalism, regulatory bodies, or even states. Were one to place these facts alongside the company’s campaign, it would appear that Vedanta is less the leader in sustainable development and social responsibility in India’s universe of corporations, and more the black sheep of that world. It stands accused of habitually forging ahead with its mining and quarrying operations before the requisite permissions have been granted, and of dividing and destroying local economies and fragile ecosystems, such as those in the hills of Niyamgiri in Lanjigarh, Odisha, with its economic might and ability to influence state policy.

To cite only a small number of such inconvenient truths that muddy the company’s narrative: In August 2010, India’s then-minister for environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, canceled Vedanta Alumina’s clearances to mine bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha. At that time, the Times of India reported:

Mining giant Vedanta consistently violated several laws in bauxite mining at Niyamgiri, encroached upon government land, got clearances on the basis of false information and illegally built its aluminium refinery at Lanjigarh, Orissa. As the company engaged in these violations, the Orissa government colluded with it and the Centre turned a blind eye. These are some of the findings of the four-member N C Saxena committee, which on Monday recommended that the company not be allowed to mine in the hills that are the abode of the Dongaria Kondh and Kutia Kondh tribes in Orissa.

The no-holds-barred indictment of the state and private sector in the $1.7 billion project brings out the short shrift given to concerns about tribal rights and environmental protection. It is significant also because it underlines the changed sensibilities of the government towards the issues against the backdrop of Left-wing extremism and why Naxalites are finding it easy to influence alienated tribal belts.

And in July 2010, Peter Popham reported from Vedanta’s annual general meeting in London:

Nyamgiri is regarded as a god by the Dongria Kondh tribe that lives on it, so for them and their supporters, tearing the peak of the mountain apart for bauxite would be sacrilege. In their effort to spike this argument, this year the company rolled out the top manager at the company’s nearby bauxite refinery, Mukesh Kumar, who claimed that the tribe no longer worship the mountain and welcome the mine’s arrival. Music to shareholders’ ears – but was it true?

This was the point seized on by Samarendra Das, an Indian research scholar and activist from Orissa, who rose from his seat to ask Mr Kumar a simple question: by what name do the Dongria Kondh refer to Nyamgiri, their holy mountain? The silence was deafening – until filled by the boos and catcalls of the activist-shareholders at the meeting, which from that point onwards went down hill. […]

Dr. Felix Padel, the anthropologist who happens to be Darwin’s great-grandson […] was among the shareholder-activists witnessing Vedanta’s discomfiture this week. Padel has lived among the tribals of Orissa for years, and in his new book, Out of this Earth, co-authored with Samarendra Das and launched in London last night, the techniques by which mining giants set about breaking the resistance of tribal people who happen to be in their way through fraud, forcible occupation, corruption and intimidation, are documented in painstaking detail.

From these testimonies it seems clear that one doesn’t have to be a left-wing revolutionary (opponents of Odisha’s huge mining projects are routinely tarred as “Maoists” by the government) or a crusader against big business to have serious doubts about Vedanta’s approach to law, ethics, transparency and due process. Indeed, it isn’t clear that at a time when the world, and especially developing economies, need vast quantities of aluminum and steel, it is realistic to insist (as Samarendra Das does in an essay and the prominent Indian writer Arundhati Roy does in her recent book on left-wing extremism, governments and mining in India, “Walking With The Comrades”) that states and societies can agree to “leave the bauxite in the mountain” for good.

Even so, it’s one thing to accept that mining is a necessary reality. It’s quite another to accept the reality of Vedanta’s collusion with the government of Odisha to try and pay off tribals to vacate mineral-rich land to generate vast profits. Those profits are only derived from the development of one of India’s poorest states. The company then uses the thin gruel of its own corporate social responsibility measures to generate the material for PR campaigns such as the one that swamped India’s television screens in January. As Padmaja Shaw wrote last month in the media-analysis website The Hoot, in a piece called “Creating Happiness?” democracy is reduced to a farce when capital-rich entities are allowed to control the message on a matter of wide-ranging importance merely because they have the cash to control the medium:

Very little debate has been allowed in the mainstream media on why the mining enterprise is suddenly the private property of corporations to exploit and profit from national wealth while brutalising the very people in whose name this is supposed to be happening.

Corporate entities further compound the absence of debate on this reality by buying the best of advertising talent to promote an idyllic image of themselves as messiahs of liberation and transformation for the tribal people, specially using images of children. […] The advertising industry in India boasts of some of the world’s best creative minds. It is not an industry that we can accuse of being unaware of the reality in India. When advertising of dubious nature shows up on the media, it is, therefore, roundly condemned. […]

It is somewhat disheartening to see people such as Piyush Pandey, Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, and renowned filmmaker Shyam Benegal associate themselves as jury with a film festival, Creating Happiness, that Vedanta has launched.

The outrage generated by the ad campaign meant that Benegal and the actress Gul Panag pulled out of the Vedanta jury, leaving Pandey as the sole judge. After the student films had been made, Aman Sethi and Priscilla Jebaraj reported in the Hindu:

Vedanta’s “Creating Happiness” campaign, according to company spokesperson Senjam Raj Sekhar, is part of an “initiative to tell our side of the story”; yet the hostile reception on blogs and social-media networks like Facebook and Twitter highlights the risks of exposing a tightly controlled corporate message to the anarchy of the internet. […] Activists have even started a viral “Faking Happiness” campaign in an attempt to highlight Vedanta’s alleged malpractices. […]

“We told them do not make a corporate film,” Mr. Sekhar said, “find the story of either an individual or a family or the entire village or the community whose lives have changed…so it’s not about the programme but about individuals.”

The films themselves are student productions showcasing a variety of CSR initiatives such as hospitals, football academies, company run schools, rural entrepreneurs and anganvadis. Yet, none of the films explore themes such as ecological damage or the impact of mining on forest communities. The sole film to address the issue of rehabilitating project-affected individuals describes Vedanta as a “path-breaking leader of social upwardness [sic]” that has rescued “the lives of tribals from the darkness of backwardness.”

Meanwhile, far from the worlds of advertising, PR and industry — all part of India’s booming post-liberalization New Economy, but also responsible for currents and narratives that have made the burgeoning middle class unsympathetic or oblivious to the problems of those beneath them, different from them, or dissenting from them — the tribals of Niyamgiri are still agitating to keep their sacred mountains unmolested.
(Chandrahas Choudhury, a novelist, is the New Delhi correspondent for the World View blog. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the author of this blog post: Chandrahas Choudhury at Chandrahas.choudhury@gmail.com

To contact the editor responsible for this post: Max Berley at mberley@bloomberg.net

But the results of ‘ Creating Happiness’ have been declared in a hush hush manner as compared to its thundering Launch with the binoo ad in March this year. The Binoo ad also disappeared from channels now why was that I wonder ?

The ‘ Faking Happiness”- Team has got this EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS ;-)

One of the frontline leaders of the Save Niyamgiri movement is Dadhi pusika, he openly talked about the looming threats to the lives of activists and ongoing conspiracies to kill them. On one hand, repression of the CRPF in the name of Maoist presence in Niyamgiri, and on the other, threats to their lives.
Isn’t it a blow to the fundamental rights of the Dongria Kandhs who are fighting a battle to protect their land, culture, and dignity?

Dear friends,“I went to the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha , after a gap, and people drew my attention to the growing skin disease on children adults, men and women.” says Girdhari Patra. The villagers say that this is happening because of the pollution from the smoke from Vedantafactory. Giridhari Patra requests the govenrment to set up a camp, and arrange for medicines, and investigate the possibility of this being a cancerous disease. Problems inside the mouth are also showing up and this could be due to polluted water. For more Patra ji maybe contacted at 9583022500

After Reading my open letter , Mr Shyam Benegal, who was in the jury of your competition withdrew knowing that the Creating Happiness is just Vedanta PR exercise to promote themselves. The other jury Member Gul Panag informed me on twitter that she withdrew precisely for the same reason on Feb 12th 2012.

Now, according to news item reported in exchange4media.com, on 18th March 2012, just two days before the Vedanta’s ” Creating Happiness” is going to end, it still says the films are judges by gul panag an shyam Benegal. Also, they have not officially made an announcement that jury has withdrean they just deleted the names of gul panag and shyam benegal first from jury page on the craetinghappiness.in and now youc cant even see a jury page at all as, its only Piyush Pandey who is judging the competition or maybe the Vedanta employees themeselves we dont know :-) It all hidden

So here is the link of news item and I quote

Thitry-eight more films have been created by student filmmakers from around India as part of the campaign and have been uploaded on YouTube for public voting until March 20, 2012. The films will be judged by a jury that includes Piyush Pandey, Shyam Benegal and Gul Panag. Each team has also been given ‘cinema tickets’ for their films, inviting people to view the films on YouTube and vote.

One of life’s minor joys is finding someone to admire.
Not many heroes are left to us, thanks to the mainstream press ignoring instances of quiet, sustained courage, and our own cynicism. I’m sometimes annoyed at ‘positive’ news that translates into interviews with students who have managed high scores, or interviews with successful businessmen or creative professionals. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but there’s a difference between success and heroism.

We rarely hear about those who take a stand — unless they end up being jailed or tortured or killed for it. And then we begin to wonder if there is anybody at all who takes a stand, and whether it is worth it. And if nobody does, why should we?

So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Shyam Benegal and Gul Panag had withdrawn from the jury of a filmmaking competition organised by Vedanta. I looked it up online and saw that lucrative prizes were being offered to media students. But the thing is, Vedanta’s money is not made through films. It is made through mining, mostly in rural areas and forests, and a lot of Vedanta’s activities and plans are protested by those who must suffer the consequences.

Vedanta wanted to create happiness, not by tackling pollution but through a film competition. It chose jurors like Shyam Benegal, Gul Panag and Piyush Pandey. Last I checked on their website, only Pandey’s name remained on the list. And I feel relieved, not because I want to see Vedanta criticised, but simply because I get hungry for the lack of an artist whom I can also admire as a person.

Benegal has long been a hero for many of us who like his artistic vision, and respect his engagement with the political, moral and social forces shaping the country. After lawyer-activist Kamayani Bali Mahabal wrote an open letter on her blog, telling him about Vedanta’s reluctance to take responsibility for pollution and displacement, a friend of Benegal’s left a comment saying that the filmmaker has withdrawn from the jury.

To be honest, I was surprised. I would have understood if he chose to ignore that letter. Every major corporation is devoted to extracting profit from earth, water, air, human labour, and at minimum cost. They all pump money into image management so they come off smelling like roses. Vedanta certainly isn’t the only one. And what would be accomplished if one filmmaker backed out of one tiny contest?…. CONTD…

The hunter becomes the hunted. Adman Piyush Pandey, known for his anti-smoking campaign and a film on the Bhopal gas tragedy, finds himself at the receiving end of a controversy. At the epicentre is a corporate film, ‘Creating Happiness’, that his agency, Ogilvy, made for Vedanta, the natural resources major that stands accused of human rights violations in tribal areas.

The ad, which features a young girl from Rajasthan who has benefited from Vedanta’s community initiatives, is believed to be the brainchild of Vedanta chief Anil Agarwal’s daughter Priya Agarwal, who works at Ogilvy. The ad would have escaped activists’ radar, but for a competition that Vedanta ran alongside the 90-second ad, inviting young film makers to make films on the company’s social initiatives. Two of the three jury members of the competition — actor-activist Gul Panag and veteran film maker Shyam Benegal — have resigned, claiming that they were unaware of Vedanta’s association with the campaign. And Pandey, the third jury member, has become the target of online activists, who posted ‘spoof’ ads on Facebook, showing Pandey with the caption “I’m faking happiness, are you?” Online activists sent appeals to I&B minister Ambika Soni to prevent the ad from being aired. And a counter competition inviting young film makers to create ‘faking happiness’ ads has been launched. “We are mixing issues that neither me nor the activists are qualified to make a judgement on,” is what Pandey, executive chairman, Ogilvy has to say on the debate.

I was asked to reply Piyush Pandey’s comment and I did but was not carried in the story , so here is my reply

Which issues are being mixed and where ? A clear case of playing with peoples emotions by projecting the messages in a stratigized campaign to fool people into believing what it shows,a documentraish branding, patronising our history and poverty.It is an aggressive attempt at classical conditioning from a company whose brand recognition has been closely connected to its questionable practices in precisely the kind of tribal areas where this ad claims it is ‘creating happiness’ and just look at the selected jury, Gul Panag and Shyam Benegal, the socially conscious celebrities in the world of cinema, who were actually kept in dark, that its a VEDANTA PR EXCERCISE There is something called professional ethics, I hope Mr Pandey knows that very well, so act of keeping jury in dark was totally unethical . The Films in creating happiness are produced by Vedanta , funded by vedanta, and telling people what great work they are doing, Its like judging own production , and using the filmakers to say what vedanta officials wanted to say, but could not as no onE would have then believd them obviously .